


A Cacophony of Silence

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2010-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the crack in the bathroom mirror would talk to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cacophony of Silence

When Pamela Barnes was six years old she started seeing things that no one else could. Not pretend things, not normal childhood things that you knew weren't really there. These things were strange and frightening, and Pamela couldn't make them go away, no matter how much she wanted them to.

There was a crack in the bathroom mirror that no one else could see. It wasn't always there, not always. Pamela would trace it over and over with her fingers when it appeared, to make sure it was really there. She'd feel the break in the glass under her skin, follow it across the steamed-up surface. When her mother asked what she was doing she'd told her the truth. It never occurred to her to lie. Though she could tell even then that telling was in some way _bad_. That telling people about the things she could see was wrong in some way she couldn't fathom.

Sometimes the crack in the bathroom mirror would talk to her. She couldn't always understand what it said, but she didn't like the voices. Or the people, the strange flat, blurred-out people who followed her, jumping from place to place without walking at all. They'd talk to her, and sometimes it'd just be a soft, unintelligible murmur. But sometimes it would be two or three voices at once, loud and angry. In some places it would be a roar.

No one else could hear them.

The people followed her everywhere. They'd watch her while she was sleeping, while she was eating, when she walked to school. Not always the same people, but all whispering, sad, angry, lost, jealous voices that scared her. Even when she pulled the blankets over her head or ate facing the wall they'd crowd in close behind and whisper in her ear. They wanted things, they always wanted things. Things she didn't know how to give them.

When she was eight years old she ended up curled into a ball on the floor of a museum, hands pressed over her ears to stop the voices. When her father found her she'd been quietly mumbling nonsense to herself to drown out the sound of them.

After that, her parents took her to a doctor. Pamela remembered the small blue rooms with the small chairs. She remembered how there had been questions that went on forever. She'd tried to answer then all, tried to explain what she saw. Because she'd wanted to be helped. She'd wanted all the voices and the people to stop. There'd been a quiet - so very quiet - conversation between the doctor and her parents afterwards. About how rare schizophrenia was in children, about how it might get worse as she got older, that they'd have to start managing it now. Her mother had been tight and thin and devastated. Pamela had worried that she'd been broken, broken in some sort of important way that no one else was.

But her mother had never looked at her like she was broken.

Never.

The Doctor made her take medication. It rattled around in bottles in the bathroom cabinet. It was supposed to help, it was supposed to make her better. But instead it had made her tired, made her feel itchy and strange, like she wasn't put together right. It made her hands shake, left a twitch in her shoulder which wouldn't go away. Other children made fun of her, so she stopped talking to them.

The medication didn't make any of the voices go away. It only made them slurred out and faraway, like they were underwater. The crack in the bathroom mirror expanded and contracted while she watched.

There was a woman. She didn't ask for anything, she just sat on her bed at night and kept the other people away. Sometimes she sang to her, and it didn't matter that Pamela couldn't understand the words.

When Pamela was ten years old she stopped taking the medication, and she _listened._

 __


End file.
